Again to show my less desir­able traits in my own blog; not rant­ing this time, but its oppo­site.  Although I nor­mally am skep­ti­cal on the qual­ity all MMO games, espe­cially those haven’t been released or received pub­lic beta.  But now I decide to walk out of the closet:  I believe Guild Wars 2, when it is out, will be the best MMORPG in its genre which the indus­try could offer at this time!  Oh and, Are­naNet, wanna get married?

Today’s focus isn’t GW2, actu­ally, but the lat­est update on the orig­i­nal Guild Wars.  It’s a shame that I only recently walked out the cycle of obses­sion on this game.  Com­pare to the pre­vi­ous update on the Dervish pro­fes­sion, the lat­est update, dubbed Des­ti­na­tion: Embark Beach has been uni­ver­sally praised and loved.  Here’s a list of things changed for quick reference.

  • New out­post Embark Beach: a stag­ing area for play­ers to look for mis­sion mates for all Campaigns.
  • Zaishen Daily Vanquish.
  • Play­ers can add up to 7 heroes to party.
  • Cash shop items that allow one to con­vert own char­ac­ters to heroes to use.
  • Daily quest and misc updates in Pre-Searing Ascalon.
  • More sen­si­ble Drunk­ard and Sur­vivor title requirements.
  • UI tweaks such as Min­ion con­trol and “ready” but­ton in parties.

7-hero party update has been boasted around for a bit now, and it came with nobody being sur­prised.  All who play GW knows what it means to con­trol 7 heroes instead of only 3 per player char­ac­ter.  Although the game has always been pop­u­lar, its age and pend­ing sequel cries for more power to the play­ers who want to play in Hard Mode but can­not find oth­ers to help. 

Mer­ce­nary Heroes are mir­rored copy of one’s own char­ac­ters to be used as heroes on one’s other char­ac­ters.  Although the mer­ce­nary slots being sold in NCSoft’s cash shop may raise an eye­brow or two, I feel this is more about van­ity than pay­ing cash for more power in game.  The rea­son is that the game (Night­fall and Eye of the North, to be spe­cific) offers 2 to 3 heroes per class, and only in very obscure sit­u­a­tions shall a player ever find stack­ing heroes of the same pro­fes­sion yields a big advan­tage.  Also I found this fea­ture seems to encour­age cre­ation of alt char­ac­ters in a role­play­ing sense, which some­thing I’ve never thought this way before.

Upping hero sys­tems boosted solo game­play tremen­dously, so it is only log­i­cal to make par­ty­ing up eas­ier; hence Embark Beach.  Yet what I’m really look­ing for­ward is Daily Van­quish.  It has been proven that daily quests and vari­a­tion of such sys­tem is very pop­u­lar in MMO’s–even more so in older titles like GW.  Apart from daily Mis­sion, Boss bounty, PvP form, War in Kryta bounty, no doubt daily Van­quish will bring more activ­ity and more fun to both the new play­ers and the vet­er­ans.  Minor changes such as rework­ing on the titles stated above removed some minor annoy­ances, which is more than welcoming.

Finally, my hats are off to Are­naNet for the magic of turn­ing an old title and its veiled suc­ces­sor into one the most antic­i­pated focus point of the MMO indus­try.  GW2 recently enjoyed pop­u­lar­ity in GDC and the juicy game­play videos that sat­is­fied my thirst quite well.  For our good ol’ GW, Winds of Change is still com­ing, so stay tuned!